Tag: carrie fisher heart attack

Actress Carrie Fisher has died at the age of 60, People magazine reports.

The Star Wars star suffered a cardiac arrest on Friday on a United Airlines flight from London to Los Angeles just before it landed at LAX. She was travelling back from promoting her new book The Princess Diarist. Paramedics were there when the plane landed and “provided Advanced Life Support and aggressively treated and transported the patient to a local hospital.” Her brother, Todd Fisher, told reporters that his sister was in the Intensive Care Unit.

Best known for her role as Princess Leia in the original “Star Wars” trilogy which started in 1977, the character that propelled her into fame.

Princess Leia

In the 1980s, Fisher battled addictions to alcohol and drugs, which she wrote about in her first book, 1987’s “Postcards from the Edge.” The successful, semi-autobiographical novel is about an actress addicted to drugs and it was made into a movie in 1990 for which Fisher wrote the screenplay. Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine starred in the film.

Fisher has also had success as a script consultant for multiple movies, revising scripts for “Sister Act” and “The Wedding Singer.”

In 2008, Fisher released “Wishful Drinking,” an autobiographical book in which she wrote more about her struggles with addiction and mental illness. It was turned into a one-woman stage play starring Fisher and aired on HBO.

Leia and Han in Star Wars The Force Awakens

In a 2015 interview with Diane Sawyer, Fisher publicly revealed her struggles with manic depression, a chemical disorder also known as bipolar disorder.

“I used to think I was a drug addict, pure and simple — just someone who could not stop taking drugs willfully, And I was that. But it turns out that I am severely manic depressive.”

Fisher returned to the “Star Wars” franchise in 2015’s Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens. She has just finished shooting Star Wars: Episode VIII due for release December 2017.

In her new new book The Princess Diarist Fisher revealed that she had a secret love affair with Harrison Ford during filming of the first Star Wars movie.

Carrie Fisher was born October 21, 1956 to Hollywood actor Debbie Reynolds and singer Eddie Fisher. She is survived by her daughter, Billie Catherine Lourd, from a previous relationship with agent Bryan Lourd.